SGN’s IT Director tells CIO UK the organisation has developed a mobility strategy to improve efficiency, security and resilience.

After graduating from London South Bank University having studied Multimedia Journalism, Chloe joined CIO UK as an online editor. She has a particular interest in digital strategy, UK startups and developing IT skills.

November 18, 2016

CIO UK
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SGN has implemented a mobility strategy which delivers energy “safely and reliably” to its customers, according to its IT Director Andrew Quail.

“As a company three-quarters of our workforce is mobile,” he said. ”In delivering our core critical services, such as emergency gas escapes, we can now go from a place which had one mobile service to moving additional services over and above that.”

The mobility strategy, led by IT Director Quail, will see the green gas company support the business needs in terms of developing mobile apps, securing interaction with backend services, and simplifying the app maintenance process.

Scalability

The mobility platform will help the organisation to scale based upon public cloud in distributing natural and green gas to its 5.8 million homes and businesses across the UK, with IT Director Quail admitting it is about providing a better service to its customers.

“It is about delivering energy safely and reliably in keeping our customers warm,” he said. “My role is how we drive the efficiency with it less being about costs and timescale but better customer interaction and feedback on providing these services.”

Robotics

As well as the mobility strategy, IT Director Quail is currently experimenting with robotics which will create a safer way of inspecting the company's pipelines.

The pipe robotics will mean customers have less disruptions in their fuel supply, with the IT Director Quail admitting there were a few challenges in development.

“In combining how we get the data back from the enterprise we also have to look at disruptions in fuel monitoring and weather analysis in having to put more sensors on to our networks,” he said.

SGN is leading the way ahead of its competitors in terms of regression analysis, costs efficiency and customer satisfaction, with Director of IT Quail seeing the future of the gas company being driven by their CEO.

“We continue to focus heavily in providing better customer service and how technology can underpin that,” he said. “The CEO is passionate about driving innovation within our business and is investing heavily on technology.”